Paying for Web 2.0 Services
by Mike on December 1, 2005

I review a lot of companies at TechCrunch.

I continue to use very few over time, and pay for fewer still. Before today, I the only sites I’ve paid for are Flickr (I needed more than the three free “sets” they give with a basic account) and Pandora (I listen to Pandora while writing). I just added Feedburner to that select group.

Feedburner has been an absolutely excellent service provider to me over the last six months. In my opinion they actually give too much away for free. But there are a few extra analytics that they offer for pro customers, and so I decided to pay the $5 per month and try it out.

At this point I couldn’t live without Feedburner and MeasureMap site and feed analytics. I’d happily pay for both company’s basic service.

Companies often offer me free upgrades for their services. I usually decline, because I really want to see if I subscribe over time. It’s a good litmus test to see how much I value what they are offering.

I’m interested in hearing about what web 2.0 services others are paying for.

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Comments

good list…I used to pay for Foldershare until Microsoft bought them and made it free.

 

It is and isn’t Web 2.0, but I pay for it - Yahoo! Mail Plus.

 

I wouldn’t pay for any site when the only benefit is that you get an ad-free version as is currently the case with pandora. However, if they included more features for people who payed for it I would gladly pay for it.

 

I pay for Flickr, FeedDigest, Mint (does that count?).

 

I went for Flickr Pro Account and don’t regret it. I also think of getting Pro features on FeedBurner and paying for FlickrMap. These are the only three where i see real value when paying for them. As for FeedDigest: gotta check that out a little more…

 
 

Funny you mention this as it’s been troubling me for a while. All these great services coming out but in general, we don’t want to pay for them. There is still a fairly large paradigm shift needed before any kind of main stream adoption happens.

 

I pay for Flickr Pro, and (if it wasn’t free, so noone tell them please) I would be prepared to pay for rss.searchfox.com.

 

I agree, FeedBurner is definitely a company to watch. FeedBurner has a near monopoly on the feeds industry and they are based out of my hometown, Chicago. Who’d of thought? I think that their recently created feed ad network with time is going to be the Google Adsense of feeds. With print publishing circulations in question, an interest by publishers to measure circulation on the Internet will increase as publishing companies continue to add more offerings online. FeedBurner strength is in its metrics, they offer an excellent metrics package to help convey the readership and essentially the value of items in a feed. For some recent Somewhat Frank posts on FeedBurner check out: http://www.somewhatfrank.com/feedburner/index.html

 

FeedDigest.com. Best money I ever spent…and will be spending for a long time.

 

I think the message is that people won’t pay for things that are “just” fun. I like last.fm (for example) a lot, but I’m not caused enough pain by the free version to get my card out.

I need FlickrPro and FeedDigest for my professional site (I’ll also pay for MeasureMap when it launches), but for a personal site I wouldn’t bother at all.

 

Also I’ll be paying for Feedburner once I start advertising in my feeds and it becomes worth it.

 

If the web was the bread and butter of my life, I’d pay for Feedburner. The metrics don’t mean all that much to me a the moment.
Really should get Scoble to use it.
http://lookleap.com/techlifeblogged.blogspot.com/a1

 

Businesses are paying for commercial wikis and collaboration software:

Central Desktop
Basecamp
Socialtext
Jotspot
Zimbra

None of us have high revenues, but its early in the game still. Also, how “high” was Flicker’s revenue? Exactly.

The real scale in “web 2.0″ companies will be realized when the business markets start adopting wikis and other collaborative platforms (web group calendaring). Its starting, but we’ve all got a long way to go.

 

I pay only to Web 1.0 companies: fastmail.fm for their excellent mail service, and My hosting company.

I would be willing pay to bloglines and furl.net around 5$ a month.

 

none.. though i think i am in the minority. However the file-shring generation has become used to not paying for things on thier pc’s.. i’d pay for firefox and i think if i had a proper blo i’d pay for wordpress.. (maybe i’d pay for searchfox if they filtered duplicates.. but don;t tell them!.. and they wouldn;t make money from it becuse most people don’t “get” searchfox) but i funny that only those that have been free and had their credentials proved though exhaustive use ect

 

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